By Robbin Laird
The comfortable world of middle power diplomacy is disappearing. For decades, countries like Brazil and Australia have thrived by maintaining strategic flexibility. They are trading with multiple partners, participating in diverse institutional frameworks, and avoiding definitive alignment with any single major power. This hedging strategy worked well within the relatively stable architecture of the post-Cold War liberal international order.
But as majorpower competition intensifies and competing visions of international order emerge, the middle ground that enabled such strategies is rapidly eroding.
The current moment presents democratic middle powers with an unprecedented challenge: they can no longer simply navigate between competing major powers but must actively choose between competing systems of international order. More fundamentally, they may need to become architects of new frameworks rather than mere consumers of existing ones.
The conventional wisdom often treats middle powers as inherently democratic entities, countries like South Korea, Japan, Australia, India, and Brazil that occupy the space between major powers and smaller states while maintaining democratic governance. This framing, while appealing, obscures important historical and contemporary realities.
Middle power status has never been inherently linked to democratic governance. During the Cold War, countries like Egypt under Nasser, Yugoslavia under Tito, and Indonesia under Sukarno operated as classic middle powers precisely because they could navigate between superpowers while maintaining non-democratic systems. Today, countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia continue to exercise middle power influence with varying degrees of democratic legitimacy.
The current clustering of democratic middle powers may reflect the particular circumstances of the post-Cold War liberal international order rather than any structural relationship between middle power status and democratic governance. This historical contingency becomes important when considering how these countries might adapt to a changing international system.
Even within the presumed democratic middle power category, the picture is more complex than it initially appears. India’s democratic credentials are increasingly contested among scholars, given concerns about press freedom, minority rights, and institutional erosion under Modi’s BJP. This complicates any simple equation between middle power status and democratic governance.
Brazil’s engagement with BRICS exemplifies the challenges facing democratic middle powers in the current international environment. President Lula’s approach to BRICS reflects a classic middle power strategy, namely, leveraging multilateral institutions to amplify influence and create alternatives to Western-dominated frameworks. The organization offers Brazil opportunities for South-South cooperation, economic partnership, and enhanced global influence.
However, BRICS increasingly presents Brazil with uncomfortable choices about international order. The organization includes authoritarian members (Russia and China) and increasingly authoritarian ones (potentially India), creating tensions with Brazil’s democratic identity. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea place Brazil in the difficult position of either implicitly endorsing authoritarian behavior or undermining the cohesion of an organization central to its middle power strategy.
The expansion of BRICS to include countries like Iran, Egypt, and the UAE further complicates Brazil’s position. While expansion increases the organization’s global reach and influence, it also dilutes whatever democratic character it might have possessed and potentially commits Brazil to defending an increasingly authoritarian bloc’s interests.
More fundamentally, BRICS is not merely an alternative forum for international cooperation. It represents an active challenge to key elements of the existing Western generated international order. Alternative payment systems, parallel legal frameworks, and explicit rejection of Western-led institutions suggest that sustained engagement with BRICS may require Brazil to choose sides in a broader competition between democratic and authoritarian models of international order.
Australia’s Strategic Quandary
Australia’s position illustrates the “middle power dilemma” with particular clarity. The country faces the challenge of maintaining an economic relationship with China which accounts for roughly 30% of Australia’s trade while preserving a strategic alliance with the United States as competition between these great powers intensifies.
Australia’s recent experience demonstrates how quickly traditional hedging strategies can collapse under great power pressure. China’s economic coercion following Australia’s calls for COVID-19 investigations, trade restrictions on Australian products, and broader pressure campaigns revealed the fragility of compartmentalized relationships. The assumption that economic and security relationships could be managed separately proved false when China explicitly used economic tools to pursue broader strategic objectives.
The Australian response which was to deepen security ties with the United States through AUKUS while attempting to rebuild economic relationships with China represents a more sophisticated form of hedging.
However, this approach faces inherent limitations as major power competition intensifies. China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, Taiwan tensions, and broader competition with the United States make it increasingly difficult for Australia to maintain relationships with both powers without compromising core interests.
Australia’s engagement with alternative frameworks such as the Quad, regional partnerships with Japan and India, and enhanced ASEAN relationships suggests recognition that traditional bilateral hedging may be insufficient. However, these multilateral approaches still operate within the basic framework of choosing between competing major power systems rather than creating genuine alternatives.
The Limits of Hedging in an Era of Systemic Competition
The fundamental challenge facing democratic middle powers is that traditional hedging strategies assume a degree of systemic stability that no longer exists. Hedging works when great powers compete within a shared framework of international order, allowing middle powers to benefit from multiple relationships while avoiding definitive alignment.
Contemporary major power competition is different. China and Russia are not simply challenging American hegemony within the existing international system. They are actively working to reshape or replace key elements of that system. The Belt and Road Initiative, alternative payment systems like SPFS and CIPS, expanded BRICS membership, and various regional security arrangements represent not just parallel institutions but efforts to create alternative frameworks that could eventually supplant existing ones.
This systemic competition creates several challenges for middle power hedging strategies:
- Institutional Incompatibility: As alternative institutions develop their own rules, standards, and expectations, participation in multiple frameworks becomes increasingly difficult. Countries may face pressure to choose between competing trade rules, legal frameworks, or security arrangements.
- Ideological Pressure: Major power competition increasingly involves competing models of governance and international order. Middle powers find it difficult to maintain relationships with both democratic and authoritarian powers without implicit endorsement of competing political systems.
- Economic Weaponization: The use of economic tools for strategic purposes, such as demonstrated by China’s pressure on Australia or Western sanctions on Russia, makes it harder to compartmentalize economic and security relationships.
- Technological Fragmentation: Competition over technology standards, supply chains, and digital governance creates pressure for countries to choose between competing technological ecosystems.
The Imperative for Democratic Innovation
The erosion of traditional hedging strategies creates both challenges and opportunities for democratic middle powers. While the comfortable ambiguity of the post-Cold War period is disappearing, the current moment also presents possibilities for institutional innovation and leadership that may not have existed under more stable conditions.
Rather than simply choosing between American-led and Chinese-led systems, democratic middle powers might need to become architects of new frameworks that reflect contemporary democratic values while addressing legitimate criticisms of the existing international order. This would require moving beyond the traditional middle power role of diplomatic facilitation toward more active institutional entrepreneurship.
What would democratic institutional entrepreneurship look like in practice?
This approach would require democratic middle powers to work together more systematically than they have historically. Countries with different regional priorities, economic interests, and strategic relationships would need to develop joint initiatives and shared frameworks, something that has proven difficult in the past.
The Brazil-Australia Paradigm
Brazil and Australia, despite their different regions and relationships, face remarkably similar challenges that illustrate the broader middle power dilemma. Both countries have prospered under the existing international order while maintaining some distance from American leadership. Both face pressure to choose between economic relationships with China and strategic relationships with the United States. Both are exploring alternative institutional frameworks while trying to maintain democratic credentials.
Their different approaches to these challenges — Brazil’s BRICS engagement versus Australia’s alliance deepening — suggest different strategies for addressing the same fundamental problem. However, both approaches face limitations that point toward the need for more innovative solutions.
A collaborative approach between countries like Brazil and Australia might offer possibilities that neither could achieve alone. Their different regional perspectives, economic relationships, and institutional memberships could provide the foundation for new frameworks that transcend traditional regional or ideological boundaries.
Such collaboration would require both countries to move beyond their comfort zones and accept greater responsibility for global governance outcomes. It would mean investing serious political capital in institutional innovation rather than simply managing existing relationships. Most importantly, it would require recognition that the comfortable world of middle power hedging is disappearing and that new approaches are necessary for maintaining both national interests and democratic values.
The comfortable world of middle power diplomacy is ending. The strategies that enabled countries like Brazil and Australia to prosper while maintaining strategic flexibility are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain as major power competition intensifies and competing visions of international order emerge.
The response to this challenge will likely determine not only the future of individual middle powers but the broader trajectory of international order. Democratic middle powers can continue attempting to hedge between competing major powers, but this approach faces inherent limitations as systemic competition intensifies. They can choose sides in the emerging competition between democratic and authoritarian models, but this risks reducing them to junior partners in major power conflicts.
Alternatively, they can attempt to become architects of new frameworks that transcend traditional great power competition while maintaining commitment to democratic values and international law. This approach is more demanding and uncertain than traditional middle power strategies, but it may be the only way to preserve both national interests and democratic principles in an increasingly complex international environment.
The question is not whether the current moment represents a crisis for middle powers for it clearly does. The question is whether democratic middle powers will respond to this crisis with institutional innovation and leadership, or whether they will find themselves forced to choose between unsatisfactory alternatives created by others. The answer to this question will likely shape the future of international order for the period ahead.